Archive of Our Own ^beta

THE NEGATIVE YEARS

In -436 ABC,

We land on the back of a sheep.

The shepherdess, Kentepelosh, has very good hearing,

And picks us up when we yell “Yeep!”

She tells us that the very bright light we see

Comes from a brightly lit star.

And that our whole planet is one speck of dust!

That’s how we know Who we are.

And so we saw the very first Christmas.

Or, as much as we could see.

Everything out there looks huge and blurry,

And a somewhat fun place to be.

Kentelopinsh drops us, by accident,

And we land in some scratchy hay (we think).

And then the wind drops us in a bucket of water!

All of us nearly sink!

The planet is in chaos. Everyone is miserable.

We’re terrified in this hour of need.

One Who, Temper Teply, remains calm and collected.

He bravely takes the lead.

“Since our world is one tiny speck of dust,” he says,

“And our world is fragile and small,

We must tread carefully and stick together,

All for one and one for all.”

We brace it through and make it alive,

And realize a plan must be made.

No outrageous Thinks to mess us the normal,

Least our dire reality should fade.

We stick to a schedule that’s strict and that’s sure,

We regulate all that we eat.

Yet these hardships make us band together.

We remain brave and kind and through this feat.

IN THE YEAR 0 ABC

In 0 ABC, the Calendar is formed.

Who drifts around and so

Has no night or day, you see.

How would this then go?

We measure our time in units we call

The Years of ABC.

It stands for Absolute Bananaberry Cycles.

Time ticks to the sprouting of this tree.

We form the Mayor’s Garden filled with these trees,

Although we have no Mayor.

We elect honored gardeners to care for the grove,

With much cheer and much care.

And for all of you in the big blurry world,

One ABC year is equal to

Exactly almost a little more than half of

What is a year to you.

THE PERIOD OF WIND AND CHANGE

In 246, we are caught

Once more, by a human named Tim.

Well, not really. Tim couldn’t hear us.

So that is just what we call him.

We stayed on Tim for a while,

His jacket was very soft.

But then, he went outside one day,

And the wind carried Who aloft.

In 399 ABC

Mr. and Mrs. von Van

Begin to study science together

And invent the frying pan.

They also invent the triple blow horn

And the process of fermenting cheese.

But they are most known for creating the telephone

For communication with ease!

In 846, a problem arises.

We need solid history.

Thus far, we have simply told it

As stories passed down, you see.

But now we realize we probably should

Have a record of some kind.

So we can refer to this record to get us

Out of historical binds.

The Three Brothers Tootle Who are put to the task.

They experiment and ponder.

And finally they invent the photograph

To record the history yonder!

Not to be outdone, their seventeen sisters

Invent the washing machine.

The whole Tootle Who Family is now hailed

As one of the cleverest we have seen.

So now we record all important events

On a camera to know what we spoke.

We also have re-enactments

For the times when the camera broke.

We also have clean clothes, which really is great!

It helps with our clean status quo.

And the Sisters Tootle Who also begin

Our style of fashion, you know.

In 987, Who is still drifting

Carried by the wind.

But now we land in a dark, dry place

And pray for it to end.

God must have heard, for soon the wind picks up

And lands us. It’s much better there.

For one, it is light. We can actually see.

And there’s a fresh sort of smell in the air!

In 1000 we have a huge celebration!

In fact, we have it five times!

We rewatch old history and play lots of music

And list out all the numbering primes.

In 1010 we begin to make fabric

Out of Truffula Trees.

We do not mean to do any harm.

We let most of the forest be.

THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR

In 1355, Jack Jay John Jones

Invents our butter and bread!

He is hailed as a hero, but very soon

An issue comes to head.

Of course, to incorporate bread and butter

Into our world and make the balance stay,

We must decide how to eat it

And eat it all the same way.

Some say butter up! Some say butter down! 

Some say no butter at all!

And War is declared! It’s awful! It’s gruesome!

But if not, our planet might fall!

Most underestimate the general importance

Of balance on our dust.

We’re not needlessly strict- we’re scared for our lives!

This balance is a must.

If one thing goes wrong, one thing at all,

It might throw everything off.

So we stick to each other and stick to our patterns,

Though other planets may scoff.

Because of the War the word MEAN is invented

To describe these actions of vice.

We realize we rarely are mean to each other,

And so we call that NICE!

To make matters worse, the wind has picked up

And carries us back into night.

The outside world now is loud and dark

And makes us shudder in fright.

In 1409, General Splinter leads

The Butter Up and Butter Downs to Hill Kooms

Where they fight together and once and for all

Lead the Butterless to their dooms.

Immediately, the Butter Side Up

And the Butter Side Down resume war.

Now they have no side Butterless to deal with

The fighting is worse than before.

In 1809, the Truffula Trees

Are beginning to fade away.

The wind is gone, and it looks like

We are here in this dark place to stay.

In 2060, we fall off of something 

And into a pile of goo.

We somehow get unstuck from the muck

And land in Kalamazoo.

Everything is sticky and gross.

It takes forever to clean.

And by the time we get back to normal

It’s 3017.

One speck of light did appear about now.

That gift was the gift of song.

In this time of terrible sorrow,

Music helped us along!

The Whoville Marching Band was formed,

Named the best by the Whoville Reader.

Even today, we march on proudly,

And Yours Truly is now the proud leader!

CHRISTMAS OF 3878 ABC

The Grinch decides he hates Christmas.

He piles into a sleigh.

He steals all our presents! The trees! The Roast Beast!

And prepares to throw it away!

When we wake up on Christmas, the Whos see

We have no more presents or lights.

But Cindy Lou Who reminds us all

That Christmas is about the Holy Night.

And so we all gather and sing our hymns.

The Grinch is very surprised.

Christmas isn’t about all the gifts,

It’s something more, he realized.

He brings back the gifts! He brings back the bells!

And we invite him to the feast.

And the Grinch, with help from his dog Max,

He himself carves the Roast Beast.

THE JUNGLE YEARS

In 3890, we are caught softly

And gently carried over.

Turns out we were found by an elephant named Horton

Who has placed us on a clover.

And to make the Mayor’s Garden make sense

We finally elected a Mayor!

Our very own Mr. and Mrs. Mayor won

The battle fair and square.

But the clover is stolen by a black-bottom bird!

We are snatched in mid flight!

He carries us over a huge blurry field

And drops us from a very tall height.

Things smash and tear. Things bump and things break.

We’re all a miserable mess.

But we pick ourselves up and still stick together

And survive through all the stress.

Horton finds us again but again we are stolen

And the Jungle Creatures was us to fry!

But then they hear JoJo yell “Yopp!”

And thankfully none of us die.

The kind-hearted Jungles realize their mistake

And agree to help us Whos.

We throw a celebration and thank God

For all of this wonderful news.

In 3892, while our Thinker Jojo

Is having bread for dinner,

He puts butter in between two pieces of bread!

It’s delicious! This meal is a winner!

“And what’s more,” declares JoJo, “there is butter

On the Upside for one price of bread,

And butter on the Downside of the other!”

He was right in what he said!

JoJo declares this Think is a Sandwich:

This Sandwich ends the War;

Whoo Who Thinks up putting meat on the sandwich,

Now it’s even better than before!

Rosaline Who has teamed up Sadie Daisy

To restore the Truffula Tree.

The Marching Band is still marching strong,

(And as mentioned, one member is me)!

I Don’t Know Who I Am is our finest philosopher,

And teaches Bible studies, too.

Our storytellers are all top of the line,

And top-ist would be Ashloo Who.

General Schmitz has moved on from the war

To form a club up in West Wess,

It’s called The Survive Alone in the Woods Club,

And what they do, take a guess.

And I myself hear about something

The Jungle Creatures do.

Instead of pictures, they write history down!

So, I write the History of Who.

~Electricity Anemone Tenacity Serenity Hystericality Extraordinary Who